Meals on Wheels Diablo Region (MOWDR): Administrative Expansion Annual Grant
As people age, maintaining health typically becomes an increasingly difficult and complex challenge. Meeting the health and wellness needs of this vulnerable population depends, at least in part, on simplifying and coordinating care across diverse systems, from hospital to outpatient to community services and home.
With that in mind, the CHF has been partnering with Meals on Wheels Diablo Region (MOWDR) on and off since 2015, when the organization reorganized its services around coordinated care management. And since 2020, the CHF has been supporting, and MOWDR is serving as the lead organization for the East Contra Costa County Senior Resource Initiative, partnering with Empowered Aging, Contra Costa Senior Legal Services, Choice in Aging, and Diablo Valley Foundation. MOWDR will continue to lead the initiative as it expands countywide in 2023, funded by Measure X.
The CHF is supporting MOWDR with an administrative grant of $60,000 to create a new position, Program Director, to enhance the organization’s services and better identify and meet the evolving needs of older adults in Contra Costa County.
MOWDR’s 2023 plan will enable the organization to strengthen its administrative team by establishing the program director position and giving him or her the responsibility of overseeing all programs and client outreach. In turn, this will allow the executive director to focus more time on strategically guiding the organization’s growth. The program director will report directly to the executive director. Key responsibilities and expected outcomes include:
- Working closely with program managers to facilitate team meetings, improve internal referral processes and coordinate services
- Conducting a gap analysis for the purpose of comparing demographics of MOWDR clients to those of the entire Contra Costa County senior population (including race and ethnicity), with the goal of identifying unmet needs
- Playing an integral role in program planning based on gap analysis findings, particularly as they relate to BIPOC populations
Once CHF support ends in December 2023, MOWDR will secure ongoing funding to support the position by including the program director’s salary and fringe benefit expenses in program budgets funded by the County’s Area Agency on Aging, unrestricted grant funds and individual donations.